Report on Canadian Health Care Sets Record

Feb. 16, 2012 - PRLog -- The Decline of Health Services in Alberta (http://www.converge-group.net/620/), a detailed report prepared by Converge Consulting Group, a QCA member, was officially the biggest news story on the Canadian Health Care Network for 2011, despite only being released in August that year. Author Robert Gerst will be presenting the paper to the International Deming Research Seminar at the end of this month. With close to 10,000 downloads, the report may be the most widely ready study on Candian health care of the last decade.

The report identifies four false performance improvement assumptions characteristic of command & control thinking that have diminished health care system performance in Alberta specifically, and in Canadian health care and public administration generally;

centralization increases coordination and control,

consolidation takes advantage of economies of scale reducing costs,

increasing utilization improves system efficiency, and

performance targets drive improvement.

The report argues that recent efforts at addressing system issues won't work because these solutions are products of the same command & control thinking that created the issues.--today's problems cannot be solved by yesterday's thinking.

Command & control thinking is contrasted  with the Systems Thinking of Edwards Deming and The Decline of Health Services in Alberta details how this change in perspective and management style can improve Canadian health care system performance.

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The Quality Council of Alberta is a membership-based organization dedicated to the application of Quality, Deming's System's Thinking and Evidence & Knowledge-Based Management.